Posts Tagged ‘Brazil’

Brazil’s Carnival Burns Up… Literally

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

“(Reuters) – A large fire swept through Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival center on Monday, destroying thousands of costumes and floats and throwing preparations for Brazil’s annual festival of hedonism into chaos.”

Best Quote

“The only thing that didn’t burn was our desire to parade.” – Helinho de Oliveira

What do you think?

Can you imagine how much money this cost the people of Brazil? There’s the cost of costumes and floats, plus the time and labor it took to make them, there’s the destruction of people’s property and belongings (including wallets full of cash and credit cards), and then there’s the big event… Will there be as many tourists and money-spending revelers this year?

In Exhibition Soccer Matches, Everyone Wins

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Practice in new climates isn’t the only reason teams are playing in distant locales.

  • More and more, national soccer teams are playing exhibition games (called “friendlies”) in unusual places, often far from home.
  • The practice is basically a money-maker for everyone: the agents that manage a team’s exhibition games try to maximize profit for the teams, the game broadcasters, and sponsors. They manage to make a pretty neat profit for themselves, too.
  • Teams are sent to play friendly matches wherever they’ll get the biggest audience – live or on television. Brazil recently played a friendly in Derby, England that was viewed live by only 13,088 fans but broadcast to 120 different countries.

Facts & Figures

  • In October, Argentina traveled to a friendly match in Japan, Chile traveled to Oman, and Brazil played Iran in Abu Dhabi.
  • Since June 2007, only one of Brazil’s 18 exhibition games has been played in Brazil.
  • As a result of their deal with sports rights agency Kentaro, the Brazilian soccer federation receives approximately $3 million.

Best Quote

“This is the new landscape of international football. Friendly games used to be a chance to try out new players or different formations. Nowadays they’re about making money, which means going wherever you’ll get the biggest audience.” – Tony Cottee, Football Analyst and Former Player for the England National Team

Nestle Seeks Customers in the Amazon

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Nestle is adapting to the needs of lower-income areas in order to take advantage of a new market opportunity.

  • Nestle is sending a supermarket barge down the Para and Xingu rivers, two tributaries of the Amazon, in order to reach customers in Brazil who cannot get access to name-brand goods otherwise.
  • The company has created smaller and cheaper versions of its products so that lower-income consumers will be able to afford them.
  • If the project is successful, Nestle plans to expand it in Brazil or even in other countries like the Philippines.

Facts and Figures

  • Nestle predicts that as many as one billion people in emerging markets will become able to afford its products in the next decade and that it will make as much as $18 billion per year from selling the smaller and cheaper forms of its products worldwide. The company also plans to increase the proportion of its sales that come from developing countries from 35% to 45% in the next decade.
  • The supermarket barge makes a circuit that brings it to 18 cities and 800,000 potential customers.
  • Nestle has invested one million reais ($560,000) in creating smaller and cheaper products and establishing partnerships with local suppliers.

Best Quote

“In Para, rivers act as streets and avenues. We have to adapt to this reality. [People’s] daily lives here are linked to fishing, to the region they live in. They don’t have the time or money to get to the capital.” – Ivan Zurita, President of Nestle Brazil